Designed for musicians, Ableton Live 8.2 brings you a unique creative workflow, a host of amazing-sounding virtual instruments, and its most powerful set of performance tools yet - bridging the gap between studio and stage. With Ableton Live 8.2, you'll have all the standard digital audio workstation tools you need for professionally recording and editing audio. Yet, you'll also be ready for innovative sound-on-sound looping with the new Looper tool, as well as creative audio and beat warping, and extremely flexible groove-creation and modification. Take the "right-brained" approach to making music, with Ableton Live 8.2.

While Ableton Live 8.2 certainly offers all of the tools you need to make music in a traditional "linear" way, the gurus at Ableton developed this software suite to allow a uniquely creative approach to song creation. Use Ableton Live 8.2 to piece together song ideas and song structures by dragging around sections and loops in "Session View" (discussed further below). Or, use Live 8.2's Session View to enhance your live performances by assigning out massive MIDI controls - so you can record loops, overdub, perform in a massive synth part, and develop songs, all on the fly. Offering an inspiring workflow for everyone from DJs to solo musicians to top-level groove producers, Ableton Live 8.2 is a complete solution for brainstorming, creating, composing, building, growing, and performing your songs.

Use Ableton Live 8.2's Session View to develop your songs - either in the creative environment of your studio or out in front of the audience. In this mode, you can quickly lay out all of each instrument's "changes" of a song - from up to down, instead of left to right. Each part is essentially a loop, and you can trigger different scenes to play different combinations of each part, trying out new song structures or parts just by dragging and dropping. Ableton Live 8.2 appeals to tons of electronic artists for just this feature - you can record audio into Live 8.2, leave it running as a loop, record in audio to another loop, and creatively mash, solo parts, or play synth parts over the top of everything. For songwriters, Ableton Live 8.2's Session View also offers a unique way to restructure songs and try out different verse/chorus/verse/bridge lengths and transitions, without messing up the audio and MIDI you've recorded and sequenced in your "linear" session. And, once you've landed on a structure you like, you can easily record it into your Ableton Live 8.2 regular timeline, just by triggering the transitions.

Nearly every control in Ableton Live 8.2 is MIDI-mappable, so you can pair it with any MIDI controller for a serious amount of flexibility. Use your MIDI controller's knobs and sliders to adjust volumes, panning, effects, or to trigger scenes and virtual instruments. By assigning out your custom settings in Ableton Live 8.2, you can work - or perform - in any way you want.

Ableton Live 8.2 now includes an intelligent sound-on-sound Looper feature, which you can easily control remotely with a regular footswitch. What makes Live 8.2's Looper so cool is that it will read the tempo from the length of the first loop you record, and it automatically syncs up - that way, it eliminates timing issues and lets you record without the click. Use Live 8.2's Looper to loop endlessly - Multiple Looper sync lets you run as many Loopers as you want, without synchronization headaches. Plus, you can drag and drop a loop from Live 8.2's Looper right into a clip slot in Session View to make a clip. When you want it back in Looper, all you have to do is drag it back over.

If you're into grooving, Ableton Live 8.2 is even more exciting than the previously groundbreaking versions of Live. In addition to a massive Drum Rack for dragging and dropping samples, slicing them, and laying them out onto your MIDI controller, Live 8.2 now offers an enhanced groove engine. You can influence the timing and velocity/volume of audio and MIDI to give life and swing to straight patterns. Use the Live 8.2 groove engine to extract groove patterns from any audio or MIDI source - and you can build your own library of grooves from your favorite tracks, which you can apply to other tracks later. Ableton Live 8.2's groove engine also lets you quantize audio and MIDI in real time - or randomize it for a more "human" feel.

Ableton Live 8.2 comes to you with tons of effects for developing your sound and producing it until it's ready to be published on your website or on CD. Along with creative choruses, delays, phasers, and other must-have effects, Live 8.2 is now packed with five new powerful effects, developed with a bit of extra "Ableton shine." The included Vocoder lets you get that famous "singing robot" effect, and offers you a ton of control for sound design. Beyond that, a new Multiband Dynamics effect lets you visualize what's going on with your audio, so you can process it more effectively. Other new effects in Ableton Live 8.2 include a stompbox-modeling Overdrive effect, the brick-wall Limiter, and the sci-fi-sounding Frequency Shifter.

By far one of the greatest leaps in the development of Ableton Live introduced in version 8.2 is The Bridge. The Bridge lets you integrate Live and Serato Scratch Live (requires Scratch Live 2.1.1 or later; support for ITCH is in the works), giving you complete turntable-style control over your multitrack sessions. Using Ableton Live 8.2 with Scratch is easy - you just drag your Live set to one of Scratch's decks, and you're all set. Now you can can mix, nudge, loops, scratch, and otherwise manipulate your Live set, just like any other track in Scratch Live.

When you active the "Ableton View" in Scratch Live, you gain full access to you clips, loops, scenes, instruments, and devices running in Live. You can also use Ableton Live 8.2 to record mixtapes from Scratch Live. Save your Scratch Live set as an .als, and instead of recording an audio file, you'll produce an Ableton Live file complete with loops, regions, and automation data. Now, when you flub that transition near the end of your set, all you have to do is open the file and tweak it until it's perfect.

Ableton Live 8.2 Digital Audio Workstation: Features at a Glance:

NEW in version 8.2 - The Bridge integrates Ableton Live with Serato Scratch Live 2.1.1 or later

Designed from the ground up for the creative studio or performing musician

Unique Session View breaks out of "linear" music composition allows for a new, fluid approach to songwriting

Nearly every control is MIDI-mappable, for a flexible workflow - onstage or in the studio

Intelligent Looper makes it easy to build and record one-man-band songs

Tons of tools to develop beats and apply grooves

Includes a comprehensive selection of built-in audio effects, including a host of creative delays, filters, distortions, studio compressors, and EQs

Features Elastic Audio, for tweaking the timing of your music as it plays

Lets you mix, match, and add effects without ever stopping the music

Powerful creative and performing environment for DJs and mash-up artists